What an Exiled 19th-Century Economist's Letters Tell Us about the Tariff Debate
Perhaps there truly is nothing new under the sun. Robert Rich revisits the writings of Friedrich List, whose pragmatic views on economics were eclipsed by classical orthodoxy but, amid today’s debate over free trade and American exceptionalism, prove surprisingly resonant.
In 1827, Friedrich List was living in Reading, Pennsylvania. The German civil service reformer, professor, journalist, and sometime entrepreneur had previously been imprisoned in his home country for comments he made in a leaflet he circulated while serving as a member of the General Assembly in Württemberg. After serving five months of his ten-month sentence, he had accepted banishment in lieu of serving out the remainder and ultimately decided to move to the United States. In July of that year, he began writing a series of letters to Charles J. Ingersoll, the United States District Attorney for Pennsylvania and the vice president of the Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of Manufactures and the Mechanic Arts. These letters would, with their author’s permission, be published in the Philadelphia National Gazette and would also circulate as a pamphlet under the title Outlines of American Political Economy.
The Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of Manufactures and the Mechanic Arts had been established in order to promote American industry and advocated for, among other things, high tariffs on imports. In writing to Ingersoll, List was essentially preaching to the choir. He had been rather impressed by their recent talks and addresses, but he nevertheless believed that what he saw as the fundamental errors of the Society’s ideological opponents—errors inherited from such eminent authorities as Adam Smith and Jean-Baptiste Say—were not sufficiently understood.
"...the elitist versus populist character of the debate is not entirely new, and neither is the dogmatism sometimes encountered in arguments for free trade."
He thus sought, through a series of letters, to provide a refutation of the standard arguments for free trade.
Timeless reading in a fleeting world.
